Almost Too Much...

I wanted to talk about Sunny and our walk yesterday. But really, it was uneventful. Which is good, and I could elaborate, but something else has popped into my little brain here, and it's filling it up with thoughts that I simply must put somewhere.

You may recall my posting about a rescue that was advertising a couple of mustangs at a feedlot in Washington. They've gotten a pretty bad reputation, especially when people began finding out that these same folks had run another rescue which was shut down due to neglect.

Compared to the rescue I read about the other day, they look like saints.

A message popped up at the mustang forum, it was titled "Mustangs Needing Help." Of course, that got my interest up and I read the message:

"Mustangs must go.
It comes down to the sad truth of the matter. Due to the drought and the
lack of concern for horses by most people (you all are excluded) the
mustangs must go and go now I can’t feed them anymore. There are being fed
but hay is just too much to buy and have shipped here. For us to have enough
have it would cost $15,000 (hay and shipping) and we are tired of footing
the expense from our personal funds. These unwanted horses need a home ASAP.
Please don’t donate any funds it is over and we are tired of fighting the
rescue will be shut down as soon as the paperwork can be done. Thank you for
your support I am sorry to be such a failure. Tom"

His website was attached, so I went for a visit to see what was going on. The home page was a plea for feed. They had 18 horses to feed and nothing to offer them. As I read, I was appalled. These horses had been rescued from SlickGardner originally; he'd had over 500 horses, half of which were BLM mustangs, and was charged with 9 felony counts. Several rescues stepped in, one of those being the Laughing Horse rescue run by Tom.

Slick Gardner's mustangs in a holding corral

The fact that Laughing Horse stepped in to help should have been a good thing. But as Tom said on his website, they'd thought they were getting six horses, but instead there were ten delivered. Nearly double what he expected. Tom didn't bother to separate these horses, and unfortunately he had both stallions and mares. The result? Those mustangs of his bred more successfully at his supposed rescue than they would have if they'd been left in the wild. Three years later he had 18 horses; they'd nearly doubled in herd size!

The Laughing Horse website claims there's no such thing as unwanted horses...or at least it did until Tom put up his new home page. I'd link to it, but it was totally off color. Tom's not happy with what people are saying about him, it seems. But it doesn't appear to be the fact that he's been irresponsibly breeding horses that are unwanted, rather that someone found out he was using these same horses for a little bestiality side business.

I know...not what you wanted to read this morning. Me either. Maybe I should have just stuck to Sunny...